Reflections, commentaries, critiques and ideas from 40 years experience in the fields of Community Development, Community Education and Social Justice. Useful tools and techniques that I have learnt also added occassionally.

Pages

The name of this blog, Rainbow Juice, is intentional.The rainbow signifies unity from diversity. It is holistic. The arch suggests the idea of looking at the over-arching concepts: the big picture. To create a rainbow requires air, fire (the sun) and water (raindrops) and us to see it from the earth.Juice suggests an extract; hence rainbow juice is extracting the elements from the rainbow, translating them and making them accessible to us. Juice also refreshes us and here it symbolises our nutritional quest for understanding, compassion and enlightenment.

Wednesday, 17 August 2016

A Smile to Break the Ice

They’re called icebreakers – those quick, fun, active games that get thrown
into workshops, seminars or symposia. Some are used to deliberately interrupt a
session to relieve possible inattention. Some have a learning element. Some
are used just as the name suggests, to break the ice, and have a bit of fun.

What better way to break the ice than with a smile. Smiles can be
contagious. Try walking down the road and smiling at people. More often than
not you’ll be rewarded with a smile in return. Here’s a quick icebreaker game
that uses smiles - and frowns.

1. The facilitator asks participants to pair up.
2. Once in pairs, ask the pairs to quickly touch one another on the
shoulder. Then announce that the person who was quickest to touch the other is
person A and the other is person B.
3. Have the pairs face each other. Then announce that when you say “go”
person A is to smile and person B is to frown. Advise participants to keep
their eyes open during the game so that they can see the face of the other
person in the pair. This game is best done without either person in the pairs
speaking.
4. Tell participants to relax and to allow whatever happens to happen, to
not force anything.
5. Say “go” and let the pairs see what happens.
6. After half a minute or so announce the end of the game.
7. Ask for feedback, comments, or insights. Get a show of hands as to how
many pairs experienced the smile passing from person A to person B. Ask if the
opposite happened for any pair (i.e. the frown passed from person B to person
A).

Smile Research
There is a well known saying that advises

“smile and the world smiles with you, frown and you frown
alone.”

In 1991 two researchers from North Dakota State University decided to test
this age-long piece of wisdom.1` They studied the likelihood of
someone responding to a smile with a smile, a frown, or a neutral response.
They looked also at what happens when the subject is faced with a frown. Their
results showed a clear support for the wisdom of the ages. Over 50% of their
subjects responded to smiles with a smile. However the likelihood of a frown
eliciting a frown was significantly less – about 7%.

The researchers also studied the difference between men and women. What they
found suggested a definite difference between the sexes. Women were more likely
to respond to a smile with a smile irrespective of the gender of the person
offering them a smile. Men, however, were more likely to respond to a smile
with a smile if the person offering the smile was a woman.

Both sexes responded to a woman’s smile with a smile themselves with about
the same incidence. However, if the smile originated from a man the likelihood
that a man would respond with a smile dropped by almost one-half, whereas for
women there was no noticeable difference.

The likelihood of a frown eliciting a frown in response was very low with a
variety of other responses being more prevalent, ranging from bewilderment to
neutrality. It was noticeable that if the originating frown came from a man
then the likelihood that the response would be another frown was higher than if
the original frown came from a woman.

Why the difference between men and women? The researchers did not offer much
speculation on this beyond suggesting that “although males are capable of
intimate interactions, they choose not to.” What is going on? Is it an
evolutionary throw-back to times when male leaders of a clan were unwilling to
enter into an intimate interaction with other males for fear that they might be
wanting to overthrow them?

If this is so, then men must seek to find the key that will allow them to
find release from this trap. The days of domination and hierarchies are
dissolving and men must look to their consciousness and hearts to find ways to
feel comfortable in a new reality.

Put a Smile in Your Bag of Tricks
Those facilitating community development or social justice processes have a
bag-of-tricks that they go to for various situations. This icebreaker
game is one that you can pop into that bag and help to elicit some smiles in
your workshops.

Note:

1. Verlin B Hinsz & Judith A Tomhave, Smile and (Half) the World
Smiles With You, Frown and You Frown Alone, Personality and Social
Psychology Bulletin, Vol 17, No 5, October 1991, pp 586-592

No comments:

Post a Comment

This blogsite is dedicated to positive dialoque and a respectful learning environment. Therefore, I retain the right to remove comments that are: profane, personal attacks, hateful, spam, offensive, irrelevant (off-topic) or detract in other ways from these principles.

Follow by Email

Followers

Search RainbowJuice blog

About Me

I have almost 40 years experience working (paid and unpaid, government and non-government) in community development/education and social justice fields. I have continued to keep myself abreast of philosophies and theories in these and related fields. This blogsite will offer ideas, thoughts, reflections on these fields as well as giving some tools and techniques. I don't pretend that these will be original but I do hope that they will be able to translate some of these diverse ideas into coherent forms accessible to workers in the areas.